Sunday, January 24, 2016

#Thisisme: Anti-hero

I feel pretty evil, often, and I feel this way having spent inordinate amounts of time reflecting on what my personal concept of justice is. Somewhere along the way, I just gave up on the idea of happiness and slipped into a cold utilitarian approach to life and politics.

WTF, right? How someone be 'over' happiness? Well, anger and anxiety just tend to be burning in the background of pretty much everything I do. I like being happy; don't get me wrong, but there's much more to life than being happy.

Life is an unregulated opportunity. Each life will fall on a scale of selflessness-selfishness, but it doesn't matter where. We all die alone. I'm someone who can see that the world is always burning; if I was going to make happiness a real priority, I'd be doing a lot more drugs to escape from the clusterfuck that is reality.

So I'm bitter. I like seeing returns from my efforts, I enjoy personal growth, and there's nothing quite like an 'I told you so' in your back pocket. But like a fine wine, a ripe lime, or vinegar on your chips, bitter makes the sweet and savory moments of life all the brighter.

It's my fierce individualism too. The idea of community never really stuck to me. I don't really feel requisite allegiances to queers, or New Brunswickers, or Canadians, or blood relatives. I have allegiances to people who are working in the same direction toward a better world.

Adrian in Watchmen is my kind of guy. He killed millions of people to save billions and erased his role from the history books. I've always felt a strong sense of duty or guardianship (and my Briggs-Myers quiz agreed: ESTJ). Combine with my distaste for rules, and here we are: honorable ends and ruthless, impatient means.